I left out that the airline tried to blame us by placing “pax no show” in our ticket record on the global reservation system. I had to call my travel agent to set the record straight in the system, after which I was able to get the airline to capitulate.
Placing “no show” in the record to try and blame us was definitely not good customer service.
Sure my gripe may be with the government, but what difference does it make? They are one and the same given that both entities will point fingers at each other. I tried calling Qatar airways first - they were the ones who suggested calling the health authorities.
As I’ve posted on this site in the past, I am very meticulous when preparing documentation for foreign trips. So I spent hours researching the policies and procedures and had dozens of pages of documentation on me as a contingency plan. I would expect that an airline would do the same if you were in a similar situation after the significant research you’ve done! I would not just give up and say it’s your fault. That’s not an acceptable outcome in my opinion, especially after you’ve taken pains to do the right thing.
I didn’t expect any compensation but I did expect them to make good on the contract of carriage to get us home by rebooking us on the same itinerary just without the day long stopover.
I've had a weird experience with Qatar customer service as well. Basically during covid you could get a full refund if you cancelled or rescheduled your flight. I wanted to reschedule my flight to another final destination, the support agent said they couldn't do that, but could issue me a voucher, and hold a reservation for my next flight. All I had to do was pay that flight with the issued voucher.
However they failed to even send me the voucher within 24 hours, so when I called back, I was told the flight would be an extra US$3,000.
I tried to explain the issue, that they never send me the voucher, and due to that I would be on the hook for extra costs? The support agent was totally uncooperative, and just kept asking "what would you like to do". Turned into a bit of a shouting match.
In the end I had my flight cancelled, and a voucher was issued straight away.
I still don't understand why they couldn't just look at their own logs, realize they actually didn't send the voucher, and just book me on the original flight. Or why the first support agent couldn't just use my voucher to pay for the flight.
This was also a business class flight, so I can't imagine how economy passengers are treated.
First of all they don’t give them to you immediately, so if you just want to cancel a flight and book another, tough luck. Wait or lose it.
Second they promise an additional percentage if you get the voucher instead of the refund (this was started in Covid so people would not request a monetary refund). Then you go use the voucher and lo and behold: the voucher was not for 100% of the fare, “some fees are unrefundable”, and that extra percentage just about restores the fare to the original price you spent.
So it’s nice that they offer the voucher, but why lie about any extras? This bit me in the ass when instead of requesting a “full refund within 24 hours” I just requested the voucher instead, locking me into Qatar unnecessarily.
Placing “no show” in the record to try and blame us was definitely not good customer service.
Sure my gripe may be with the government, but what difference does it make? They are one and the same given that both entities will point fingers at each other. I tried calling Qatar airways first - they were the ones who suggested calling the health authorities.
As I’ve posted on this site in the past, I am very meticulous when preparing documentation for foreign trips. So I spent hours researching the policies and procedures and had dozens of pages of documentation on me as a contingency plan. I would expect that an airline would do the same if you were in a similar situation after the significant research you’ve done! I would not just give up and say it’s your fault. That’s not an acceptable outcome in my opinion, especially after you’ve taken pains to do the right thing.
I didn’t expect any compensation but I did expect them to make good on the contract of carriage to get us home by rebooking us on the same itinerary just without the day long stopover.